Fifteen years ago, a network linking Philippine terrorist groups with counterparts across Southeast Asia and the Middle East was found to be behind the Bali bombings that killed 202 people. Perpetrators found a haven for years in Muslim Mindanao. In reaction, international support for Muslim Mindanao’s decades-old, stop-start peace process has increased significantly. Australia’s Philippine country program is testament to this.

A recent piece by Sidney Jones for The Interpreter, and a detailed IPAC report, examine how an analogous network is developing between terrorist groups in Muslim Mindanao, the Islamic State terror group and Southeast Asian terrorists. The 6 April arrest in Manila of suspected Islamic State operatives from Syria and Kuwait reinforces that foreboding sense of déjà vu.

Three years ago, great hopes arose that a political solution to the Moro Islamic insurgency, and the safe haven it provides to terrorists, was on the horizon when the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro was signed in March 2014 by the Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Moro insurgent group. Six months later, a Bangsamoro Basic Law based on the agreement was tabled for legislative approval. A botched police raid for a Malaysian terrorist in Muslim Mindanao in January 2015 that cost 44 policemen their lives drained legislative support for the law. It wasn’t passed.

The election of Rodrigo Duterte as president in May 2016 raised those dashed hopes to a new high. He’s the first president from Mindanao, has good relations with key Moro leaders, claims Moro ancestry, and placed finding a political solution to the Moro Islamic insurgency at the core of his administration’s security policy. The current Senate Majority Leader and the House Majority Leader are also from Mindanao.

While the President’s commitment to bringing peace to Muslim Mindanao is unquestioned, there are at least four reasons to worry that his approach may again dash hopes for a settlement. Each by itself is a problem, together they are daunting.

Dangerous delay: The Duterte administration replaced the Aquino administration’s Bangsamoro Transition Commission  with a larger, more diverse one. This new commission, tasked to draft a new Bangsamoro Basic Law to provide the governmental structure for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, was only established on 24 February, eight months into the President’s single six-year term, and its budget has yet to be released. The commission’s goal of submitting to the President a new draft law by 15 May, the timeline for Congress to pass the law by December 2017 and for Bangsamoro elections in 2019 look overly ambitious.

Complexity: The new Bangsamoro Basic Law is likely to be more complicated than its predecessor. The current Bangsamoro Transition Commission includes representatives from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and indigenous peoples’ representatives as well as government negotiators and a majority appointed by the MILF. The Duterte administration’s roadmap for peace, presumably through the new Bangsamoro Law, calls for:

‘…consolidation and/or convergence of the various peace agreements already entered into like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s Comprehensive Agreement of the Bangsamoro (CAB) and the Moro National Liberation Front’s 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA), including relevant provisions of the Republic Act No. 9054 (or the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao Law) and the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA).’

Ultimately though, that will be difficult to achieve and any law that’s passed is likely to face numerous Constitutional challenges.

Parallel tracks: The three commissioners from the MNLF appointed by the government come from the Muslimin Sema faction that supports the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro. President Duterte has also included Nur Misuari in his expanded approach to the peace process. Misuari, the founder of the MNLF, used his November 2016 public remarks at the presidential palace to attack Malaysia, the third-party facilitator in the current peace process, reject the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, and label the MILF traitors and criminals. The Duterte administration has promised to conduct parallel negotiations with Misuari that will then converge with the main peace process. How?

Federalism: Duterte has seen the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, as, at best, an interim phase before the introduction of a federal political system. He’s long seen federalism as the only political solution to the Moro insurgency. The push for federalism’s only now starting in earnest and could well complicate or pre-empt the passage of a Bangsamoro Basic Law and creation of a Bangsamoro regional government. Yet, the process of the Constitutional revision a shift to federalism entails is lengthy and complicated and requires popular approval. The president wants federalism to be introduced before the end of his term in 2022.

International, Southeast Asian and local terrorism dynamics are once again putting Muslim Mindanao back into the spotlight. A political solution to the Moro Islamic insurgency is the best way to extinguish this light. President Duterte may be the best positioned political leader to realise that frequently dashed hope. However, his chosen approach may work against his desired outcome.

Rodrigo Duterte is a maddening, murderous maverick who’s achieved a weird feat in the South China Sea (SCS)—delivering benefits to both China and the United States. His swing towards China offers Beijing all sorts of goodies, from the possibility of a bilateral deal in the SCS to a chance to unbalance the US rebalance.

The Duterte benefit to the US is momentary and may soon be outweighed by serious damage to the alliance. Still, at this bend in the river, Duterte has given Washington one big gift—the SCS crisis that didn’t happen. The new Philippines president changed the immediate tone of the SCS argument at an otherwise dangerous moment. Sometimes the mad and bad throw up unusual chances.

As China and America ponder the shifts and shouting coming from the new president, they have a common dilemma, well encapsulated by The Economist’s judgement: ‘Mr Duterte is not just crass and brutal; he is alarmingly volatile.’ But volatility has its uses as well as dangers in international relations. And the mercurial Duterte has certainly shaken up the SCS issue.

The fresh opening he offers China creates an important pause in a dangerous chain of events. The volatile president met a volatile moment in the SCS and actually brought the temperature down. Many feared China’s reaction after its humiliation by The Hague Tribunal. Beaten by Manila on nearly every argument, the worry was that China might lash out by beating up the Philippines—perhaps building a new base on Scarborough Shoal, seized by China in 2012 after a standoff with the Philippines Navy.

As Bonnie Glaser observed at the time of the Arbitral Tribunal ruling: ‘Xi Jinping has lost face here, and it will be difficult for China to do nothing. I expect a very tough reaction from China, since it has lost on almost every point.’ The South China Morning Post speculated that Scarborough reclamation work could begin after China’s G20 summit concluded on 5 September, but before the US presidential election in November.

In March, President Obama reportedly drew a red line around Scarborough, warning President Xi of serious consequences if China started to build another base. Perhaps Obama’s red line worked. Or perhaps Beijing decided not to test a lame duck president during an extraordinary US election campaign. Or maybe Beijing opted to turn the other cheek to the humiliation and loss of face delivered by the Tribunal. Or Duterte’s arrival is possibly the game-changer Beijing’s after. Why not give the maverick a try?

The immediate benefit for Obama is that no red line was crossed. The president who tends to blanch and go pink when other red lines are broken can, instead, head calmly to the finish line. No need for Obama to confront China in the SCS in the last moments of his watch. Indeed, if China had started a new great-wall-of-sand island creation project, would the US have stood with Duterte in either word or deed? Imagine Washington risking war with China on behalf of a Philippines leader who promises to ‘break up with America’ and tells Obama to ‘go to hell’.

Obama can accept the fleeting Duterte benefit—that confrontation with China hasn’t (yet) happened—and head for the door. President Hillary can have the task of wrangling with the maverick who could wreck the alliance. If it’s President Donald, he’ll happily say ‘go to hell too’ and declare the alliance a bankrupt business. Such a business-like response from Trump would be apt, because Duterte has a lot of business he wants to do with China.

An excellent interpretation has been offered by an Oz Asia hand, Mack Williams, who was Ambassador to Manila from 1989 to 1994 during the last alliance bust up, when the Philippines was booting the US Navy from Subic Bay.

Williams explains the Duterte plan in language far more reasonable than the president seems to manage. He lists the key factors that’ll influence the way Duterte handles the SCS dispute and, especially, China:

• the Philippines is all too aware that any military confrontation would be catastrophic for them—especially if the US were to use it as a base
• it wasn’t Duterte who launched the international arbitration case and he’s keen to handle its outcome with extreme caution
• the Philippines is more concerned about fishing rights and oil and gas potential in the disputed area than it is about international navigation
• the Philippines–China relationship is also longstanding and complex, with local Chinese dominant in business—often camouflaged by non-Chinese names.

Duterte sees much that he wants in China; the feeling is mutual. China has been deeply frustrated that it can’t translate economic might into clear strategic gains in Southeast Asia. The island creation splurge can be read as an expression of rage and frustration as much as an assertion of power: We’re big and strong and the top dog around here, but we can’t get no respect!

 Duterte offers China tantalising prospects: the bilateral deal it has always sought in the SCS and a weakening of the US alliance structure. At last, Beijing would be getting the sort of shift it wants—using the power of money to create strategic power.

Whoever finds herself as Foreign Minister after the 2 July federal election, she will need to adapt quickly to a new form of ‘dancing with the stars’. The election of Rodrigo ‘Digong’ Duterte as President of the Philippines will inject a new set of uncertainties into the bilateral relationship, the management of which will require some careful footwork.

The election of a populist is one thing. The arrival on the regional stage of mercurial tough guy with more than enough machismo for any seventy year old is another altogether. His penchant for dealing with criminals outside the justice system, the suggestion that he might grant himself—and presumably others—a Presidential pardon for past wrongdoing, and a general tendency towards bluster suggest a pretty freewheeling Presidential style. And his completely disgusting suggestion that he should have been at the head of the queue of rapists who killed the Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill in his hometown of Davao in 1989 indicates a lack of substance exceeded only by his lack of style.

Now may be just the time when an Australian Foreign Minister is again going to be confronted with a choice between principle and pragmatism.

We have been there before, of course, and have generally chosen pragmatism (the maintenance of ‘good relations’ with the administration in question) over principle (a foreign policy that reflects Australian values and takes into account the principles that underpin a global rules-based system, and the interests of the people ruled by that administration).

The Whitlam government placed a clear premium on winning President Suharto’s favour, at the expense of the people of East Timor and the people of Indonesia whose prosperity was shackled by the Suharto kleptocracy. It stayed silent on the murder of the Balibo Five, as the five Australian journalists caught in East Timor became known, preferring instead to refrain from ‘embarrassing’ the Suharto government. That was pragmatism in action.

The Hawke government stayed silent on the extra-judicial petrus killings (penembakan misterius—mysterious shootings) between 1983 and 1985, when the Indonesian armed forces murdered thousands of Indonesian gang members.  It may have reduced the national crime rate, but it did nothing for the development of the rule of law in Indonesia. The Hawke government remained in policy paralysis in 1986, when the Suharto government put a freeze on official dealings with Australia as a result of the David Jenkins exposé of corruption and nepotism within Indonesia’s ruling elite. That also was pragmatism—of a kind—in action.

The Howard government, when faced with the accelerating crisis in East Timor in 1998–9, seemed welded onto pragmatism at first when it was evidently wary of upsetting President Habibie, only to find that principle had to triumph in the end. As the grip of the Indonesian armed forces on East Timor’s internal security was declining, the suffering of the East Timorese was increasing. An intervention mandated by the UN Security Council was inevitable. As Malcolm Fraser said to me when he was Prime Minister, the sooner a government comes to the moral high ground, the better it is. Morality may be the only high value card left in the hand.

Generally, Australia seems to be slow to arrive there.

So, what do we know about President Duterte? First, he doesn’t display much regard for the political, economic and administrative institutions of the Philippines, which aren’t so robust in any case. Second, he out-trumps Trump in his ability to flip-flop between opposing positions: at one moment, he wants to take China on in the South China Sea, and at the next he was wants to leave it to the US to shoulder the burden. The Strategist post by Malcolm Davis addressed this issue well. Third, the vitreous quality of his jaw suggests a brittleness in the face of criticism and disagreement and a heightened sensitivity to any form of questioning comment or challenge. Duterte’s response to the Australian ambassador’s totally appropriate but carefully nuanced Twitter comment on his rape remarks displays an extraordinary lack of emotional intelligence and diplomatic poise.

And what of the situation facing the Philippines over which Duterte is to preside? With an economy that’s more dependent on overseas remittances than any other Asian country, continuing structural problems, continuing irredentism in the southern Philippines, and national economic, security, legal and administrative institutions that are weak and easily manipulated by strongmen, there are few internal constraints on a rampant President. And given its strategic importance to the US, even a Clinton administration is unlikely to push for much moderation on Duterte’s part.

So the Australian Foreign Minister will need to choreograph a careful approach to a more unpredictable Philippines. It will be important to leave the megaphone in the cupboard, and to argue the case for principle within the broader ASEAN forum, employing a consistency of approach in multilateral forums both to legitimise and to authenticate responses to events in the bilateral relationship. Fortunately, both the potential Foreign Ministers have the skills to do this. Let’s hope that they are able to bring them into play.

It’s traditionally said that ‘the sea commands the land’. But the relationship between the maritime and terrestrial domains is more complex than that suggests. Episodes like the attack against HMS Glamorgan in the closing stages of the 1982 Falklands War—the ship was hit by a land-based Exocet missile—show how sometimes the land may command the sea, or at least try to prevent the sea from commanding it. Technological progress over the ensuing decades, coupled with the current maritime tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and more generally the conflict between limited defence budgets and growing national naval ambitions, have revived the issue of land-based anti-ship missiles and the roles they should play. Interest is especially intense in countries building up their navies from a limited base (like the Philippines) or grappling with the realisation that the conventional maritime balance is shifting against them (like Taiwan).

There are four basic questions:

• the degree to which shore-based missiles can prevent an enemy navy from operating freely in a given body of water
• whether it’s more efficient to invest in those systems or in more traditional surface combatants
• the vulnerability of missile launchers to enemy airpower and other systems, and
• whether missile launchers should be camouflaged and dispersed among population centres or deployed only in non-built-up areas.

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The Russian military occupation of Crimea headlines this week, with Moscow showing considerable restraint so far in the use of cyberattacks against Ukraine. Considering that crippling DDoS attacks have become a staple of conflicts involving Russia and its smaller neighbours such as Estonia and Georgia, one commentator has rightly asked: where are the cyberattacks?

Ukrainian hackers are highly proficient (and patriotic) operators, so the fear of retaliation could have dissuaded Russia from the use of cyberattacks. If so, this highlights the value of offensive information warfare capabilities as an effective deterrent, a point that cyber operations centres around the world should note.

For a look at Russia and Ukraine’s cyber capabilities, as well as what has been deployed so far, check out this post on the Lawfare blog, and this piece in Foreign Policy. The key challenge in this crisis is to avoid mis-attribution and escalation, as the ability of both sides to inflict harm in the cyberdomain is tried and tested. Read more